Valeyard or what?
by melsshortformelody
Summary: When the Doctor regenerates, he changes, and he changes a lot. Clara is scared. What has happened? Is this the Valeyard? My take on a possible series 8. Rated T for violence. Doctor/Clara friendship. Dark!Doctor


Clara's body smashed against the walls of the TARDIS. She felt a strong pain in her back, but she didn't take any time to look at it. She was still staring at the doctor's new body, so much older than the doctor she had first met – and apparently, with worse kidneys. He was staring at her. "You look funny," he told her. "I don't like that t-shirt."  
"You said you loved it," Clara protested. "You're the one who bought it, even." "well, I don't like it now. I also used to like what I'm wearing, and it looks like really cheap clothes. II should buy something more sophisticated, maybe a tuxedo… It would be uncomfortable, though, but I have got to look sharp, I'm not young enough to pull cheap looks off anymore," the doctor thought aloud while he was looking at a mirror over the console. Suddenly, the TARDIS moved again and Clara crashed against the console. "oh, I'd forgotten we're crashing. Still easily distracted, good to know…. So how do you do this again? I need this to stop, why don't I have any stabilisers? Oh, wait, I do! The blue ones. She always said, the blue switches, they're stabilisers. Now, something to make this move slower…oh yes of course, the lever over there! This whole TARDIS makes a lot more sense now. Oh, River should see me, flying the TARDIS the way she always wanted me to.. I guess it's too late now, isn't it?"  
Clara was stunned. This man talked even more than the old doctor, but this one wasn't as funny as he'd been before, now, he just looked like a crazy old man talking to himself. Maybe that's what he was, and maybe he'd always been that way, but Clara was realising it now more than never.

The movement had stopped. The doctor looked at Clara again. "Well come on now, child, let's look at where we've landed." Clara was walking to the door, but he stopped her. "But no, look at the cameras, at the temperature, at the radiation; you can't just go out like that."  
Clara was on the verge of starting to cry, this man was just too different from the doctor she knew, he even was different from the ones she knew from his time stream.  
The doctor observed Clara's face and suddenly, he started to laugh. "You bought that! You really bought the "I am careful now" thing? Don't be silly, Clara, let's see what's out there. What's the worst that could happen?"  
Clara grinned, relieved. "I can't wait to find out!"

They stepped outside onto a field with flowers. A big field. A really, really big field. Wherever you looked, there didn't seem to be anything else, as far away as you looked. It didn't seem to end. "It doesn't end," The Doctor affirmed when Clara told him that. "We're at the Infinite Orb system, that's like a small planet, surrounded by twenty orbs, each with different landscapes, beaches, mountains, flower fields. The humans who came to the Herculean Galaxy after the end of Earth often missed the world's beautiful landscapes, and created this Orb system so they would have places to go on holidays. New places that looked like the old ones, that is – humans don't like changing, even when they expand, they want everything to look like it did before… sad, don't you think?"  
"So it's a touristic location," Clara asked.  
"It is, yes." The Doctor nodded.  
"So, where are all the tourists? Where's the food stands?"  
"Yes, you are right. This is certainly odd." The doctor raised his eyebrows. "Very odd, indeed."

They started to walk through the field, looking for anything that might have seemed out of the ordinary, but there wasps nothing there, only flowers, grass, and clovers. There wasn't even any garbage lying around. How could a planet be completely abandoned and left without any traces of life?

"Shall we take a look at the other orbs? Maybe we will be able to find people who can tell us what happened here," The Doctor proposed.  
"I guess, " Clara replied.  
They turned around, but the TARDIS was already gone.  
"Why does she always do this?" Clara complained.  
"I doubt it was intentional. It is much more plausible to assume someone took her." The Doctor told her  
"But there's no one here, Doctor!" she protested.  
"No one we can see, " the Doctor intervened. "Maybe there are invisible people… or possibly, they are underground. "  
"Oh, that's nice. So if they are under us, they can pull us down with them at any moment?"  
"Possibly, although I never said I was completely certain that they were undergr…"  
At that moment, they fell through the ground. The Doctor and Clara stood on rocks, completely bathed in mud, actually, everything was mud. They were in a kind of hallway with muddy walls and a hole in the roof, which was where they had fallen through.  
Suddenly, a man appeared. He was holding a torch and he waved. "Oh, welcome then."  
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "You throw us through a hole and then you say 'hello' like nothing had happened?"  
"We just saved your life! There's something up there!" the man protested.  
"Who is 'we'?" Clara asked. The man stepped to a side and revealed about twenty people, five of which who were children. They were bathed in mud and looked like they hadn't eaten in a while.  
"we were on vacation here, and suddenly, a big spaceship fell out of the sky, and ten-feet large spiders crawled out. They started to spit venom and one of the girls who were here, died. It was awful, and we hid in a hole they had been digging to make a lake, and we kept digging, and we've been hiding for a couple of weeks now."  
"Well, that is quite weird now, isn't it?" The Doctor commented. "We didn't see anyone up there."  
Suddenly, a voice echoed from the walls. "That's because we are here." Everyone winced.

"Who are you? Where are you from and what do you want?" The Doctor asked, in a calm voice, as if he were just chatting.  
"Our origins do not matter," the voice replied coldly. "We are no one who matters. You must leave this planet immediately. The other orbs have already been emptied. The ones who resisted have died."  
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "So nothing original, then. Why do you want this planet?"  
"It is not us who want the planet. We are simply peons. We must do what our masters tell us to do."  
"But, who are your masters?" The Doctor insisted.  
"We follow the instructions of the Ministry of Tourism of the galaxy Andromeda XXXVI. They have found this place is very lucrative and they want to use it for their own purposes."  
"That certainly explains it. Money. What else could it be? Humans, they are always looking for money, more money, like it solves everything! Why can't you just live in peace?!" The Doctor had dropped his cold façade, now, he was shouting. "And you, you spiders, or whatever you are, I believe you are also doing this to enrich yourselves?"  
"We certainly are, but we are getting off-topic now. Leave this planet, now."  
"No," the Doctor told them. "No one will be leaving but you."  
"Then you leave us no choice."

A laser shot came through the hole in the top of the cave. It hit a woman in the side, and she dropped to the ground, instantly dead.  
"The children are next," the voice warned.  
The Doctor shook his head. "No. And you know why not?"  
"Why?"  
"Because I say so!" The Doctor jumped and lifted himself out of the tunnel. He was surprisingly in shape for having an old body. "Come on, Clara!"  
Clara jumped out. She looked around and saw five huge spiders standing on the field.  
"Take me to your leaders!" the Doctor demanded.  
The spiders hesitated. "We can beam you up to our ship, but that will not change anything."  
"Okay, do it," the Doctor told them.

There was a flash of light and then the Doctor and Clara were standing on a ship, with two humans sitting at a console.  
"You are cowards," the Doctor said. "Hiding yourselves behind a pair of spiders. You are disgusting."  
One of the people, a woman, turned to him. "Making the deals is not our job. We simply… use what is given to us."  
The Doctor looked at her with sarcasm in his eyes. "You think you are so clever, but you're not really doing something new. Just a few beings wanting to occupy planets."  
Clara was astonished. She had never seen the Doctor so calm – and kind of cold. Why didn't he care?  
The two others had noticed it, too. "You don't seem very… concerned," the woman commented.  
"Oh, I am, I really am, but there's no need to lose my head over it." What was wrong with him?  
"Also… I have this." The Doctor pulled out a little string his sonic screwdriver, and pointed latter at the console. It blew into pieces. The two people shivered.  
The Doctor started to tie the little string on the console. "You won't be able to de-attach this now. We will be going back to the orb, and if you do not leave the orb system, I will make that little string explode, and your entire ship with it."  
"Why should we believe you?" the woman asked.  
The Doctor shrugged. "Maybe you should not. On the other side… would you want to risk yourselves?"  
He pointed his screwdriver at the console again, and he and Clara were beamed back onto the field.

The spiders did not leave, and Clara was getting more and more anxious. She highly doubted the little string the Doctor had put on the console was able to do anything, and even if it did, the Doctor would not make a spaceship blow up… Would he? Clara reminded herself this was a new Doctor.

The Doctor groaned. He talked to the spiders. "Tell them they have ten minutes, or their ship will explode. I'm starting to get annoyed." Ten minutes passed and nothing happened.  
"Well then," the Doctor said. He pointed the screwdriver at the sky. There was a loud bang and pieces of metal hung in the air.  
"You killed them!" Clara shouted, but the Doctor didn't pay any attention to her. "You'd better be gone soon, too, or I will make the whole of your beautiful ministry blow up, too."  
The spiders disappeared immediately. The tourists slowly started to climb out of the tunnel, lots of them crying, thanking the Doctor.  
Only Clara stood there alone for a while, and then she walked slowly to the TARDIS. She was scared. Who was this man? He was not the Doctor. The Doctor would never have killed these two people! He would have negotiated, done everything but murder. Added to that, he'd been so cold and indifferent. What was happening to him? What had the regeneration done to him? Clara was frightened. She went into her room in the TARDIS, threw herself onto her bed and then, she started to cry.


End file.
